


Soulmate AU

by thegreatandpowerfultoaster



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (But with a tma twist), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anchors, Fluff, Light Angst, M/M, Red String of Fate, Soulmates, The Web doin its thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreatandpowerfultoaster/pseuds/thegreatandpowerfultoaster
Summary: Even when Knowing fails him, the Web does not. He follows the string up to a place in the hallway, upstairs. It ends. He must be hidden, somewhere, or with Peter. But he's here, still. Sort of. Jon pulls on the string.There is no tug, or disjointed thoughts about how lovely the world is to reassure him. There is just empty air where there should be Martin, where Martin has *always* been, even before Jon knew it was him.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 8
Kudos: 221





	Soulmate AU

**Author's Note:**

> [The prompts I'm using!](https://oh-nostalgiaa.tumblr.com/post/182685188879/send-me-a-ship-and-a-number-and-ill-write-a-short)  
> This one's a soulmates au!

There is a long, silvery thread tied around Martin’s wrist. It has been there as long as he can remember. He even remembers asking his mum what it was, and why it couldn’t come off. 

In those days she had the patience for him, and told him gently that she didn’t see anything, and maybe he ought to come inside and wash his hands. He'd tried, or course but the silver thread had been there long before he had thought to ask, and wasn't going away with a simple good scrub with some soap. 

That was alright. It was never tight, even as he grew (and grew, and grew). Just snug in a comfortable way that made it easy to forget about it you weren't paying it any attention. 

Sometimes he liked to play with it. Pluck it like it like it was some beautiful harp string, stretching off into the distance, going on for as far as he could make it out for. 

He never really wondered where it went, didn't make any attempts to follow it. It could have gone on forever, maybe. 

He was eight, laying in the front garden and looking up at the stars. He was waiting for his father to come home, again. This was the third day of such, and his mother had snapped and told him to stop waiting, but Martin was not one to give up so easily.

Something reverberated down the string. A vibration, but also a...feeling? 

Terror. Sharp, piercing terror ran through him like an electrical current, like lightening. And it doesn't go away, either. He is left laying in the grass, chest heaving, and eyes watering, and frozen in fear.

Martin was frightened of whatever was on the other end of that string. Or whatever was happening to it, and he could feel it too. Did it mean him harm? It seemed so, as his breathing evened. He promised himself just then, that he would not meet whatever was on the other end.

* * *

It is the day after his encounter with "A Guest For Mr. Spider" when Jon notices it. He is very much grounded, and has been stuck in his room for a day an a half, only leaving to go to the bathroom. 

Granted, his grandmother is out at her knitting club, and would not know were Jon to spend the afternoon in the kitchen, where the light is better, or out on the porch, where it is warmer. But...

But he is not sure he wants to leave his room. Doors....Doors look frightening. Behind each one could be that dark, dark room, with a spider lurking within, ready to take him. 

No. He is very much fine staying here, and laying on his bed, and doing nothing. Until he turns into his side, and the light catches it.

It shimmers in the light, silver against his skin. It is wrapped around his wrist twice, before he can see it go off a few feet into the air. It has to keep going, he knows, but he can't see.

Immediately he tries to pull it off. He cannot get a grip on it. He can feel the light pressure against his skin, and the feeling almost like a very thin fishing wire, but other than that, it's like it doesn't exist at all. 

It itches, all of the sudden. Or perhaps a because he knows that it exists, and there is nothing he can do to stop it from existing, and that is why it itches.

He follows it, without thinking. Uses his opposite hand to hold on to it, and drags himself along. It goes under the door, and down the stairs, pulling tightly (but never too tight, just snugly) against the railway.

The funny thing is, is that he never gets any slack when he's walking. Logically he ought to. He has gone very far and should be able to gather the extra in his hand, but there is none. This slows him, but does not stop him.

He gets two houses down the street before he realizes that the string is not just a string, but a web. He is back in his room even quicker than he was out of it in the first place, and resolves that for his own health and safety, he must never follow that web to it's end.

* * *

Martin is maybe seventeen or eighteen when he stops actively trying to get rid of the thing. It has not harmed him, since that day, and sometimes he'll feel a slight pull or wobble, or even feel a muted kind of feeling that he is sure is not his own, but nothing like that day when he was eight.

Besides nothing works. Scissors and knives can't cut it, even some of the more...esoteric methods he'd tried in recent years hadn't had any effect. 

And he's been taking care of his mother for the last couple of years. That was when her illness had really taken a turn for the worse, and he'd dropped out of school to take care of her full time. 

He doesn't have time to worry about it, or wonder what's on the other end, or worry about what would happen if he met the thing on the other end. In recent years has gone from viewing it as a possible danger to a possible escape. He'd never go after it, of course, but it's something to daydream about when everything else is going wrong. Something that isn't worrying about how he's going to make rent by next week, or pay doctors bills, not to even mention _food_.

He decides that he'll keep going for a few months, but that's it. There has to be a different way to do this, something he's not seeing, or doing. He plucks and pulls at the string like he had when he was little, like it's a nervous tic he hasn't been able to rid himself of. There isn't any answer, and for the first time in forever it feels like a disappointment.

* * *

Jon is twenty, and he still doesn't know what it is.

He's researched, and read, which is arguably what he does best, at this point. And he still has nothing to show for it. He has tried to ignore it, and not let it bother him, but sometimes the string is pulled tighter around his wrist, momentarily. And he gets...

Well, he's not sure exactly what to call them. Premonitions isn't right, but it feels ridiculous to call them urges or anything else, really.

It's like a call is coming down the line, through the...web, but it's muted and soft, like somewhere along the line it's been passed through deep water. He'll get soft, quiet thoughts that don't make sense. 

He'd gotten halfway to the store for bread without really thinking about it, once. He had stopped abruptly, realizing that he walked out on Georgie in the middle of a conversation, and they most certainly did not need bread. 

Once, in the middle of the night he'd been thinking about how lovely the stars were. He couldn't see the stars, nor did he usually share that sentiment to begin with. The whole thing was beyond a little frustrating. And what _is_ he supposed to tell Georgie about all of it?

It's not one of the things that drives her off, in the end. At least she doesn't list it as such when they're stretching to find things to throw at each other. Although, maybe it fits somewhere between "You're a workaholic" and "You don't care when I'm speaking". He wonders, anyways if it is yet another thing that makes him and to deal with.

* * *

They are twenty-four when Martin walks into research, half an hour late. It's Jon's first day, and in the last half-hour he's already decided he hates Martin Blackwood. 

He sits in the desk across from Jon, and he has spent twenty of the thirty minutes looking over a report written up by his desk partner. It is sloppy, and half of it isn't cited, and his new co-worker hasn't even bothered to staple it all together. Is this the quality of work coming out of the Magnus Institute, an _academic institution?_

And his desk - Jon can barely stand to look at it. It's got loose papers and old books all over it, not to mention the paperweight - a large spider encased in resin. Awful. It makes him shudder. Martin himself must be just horrible. 

(Martin comes into the room just as he thinks that, carrying at least one drink holder and a bag of something. He lets out a strong puff of air in a futile attempt to get some of his strawberry blonde curls out of his eyes, and looks over at the other researcher who sits on the other side of the room. Jon can't yet remember his name. Timothy? Thomas? 

"Sorry," he says, and the first thing that strikes Jon is how soft he is. In speech, if course, but he is gentle, setting everything out on his desk. "I know you like the curllers, Tim but they were out this morning, so I got you -" it is then he notices the desk across from him is occupied. "Oh. You're new. I...You can have mine, if you want. Since I didn't know you'd be coming in today."

"No, don't go to the trouble -" No. No, he can be kind, even to this apparent disaster of a human being. " I'm fine. Really. Thank you.")

He doesn't notice - neither of them notice, at first, that there is finally slack. Until the sun is getting lower in the sky, and the light catches, and they are meant to notice. Jon sees it as he stands up to go to the copy machine.

As he's done before, he reaches with his opposite and and drags himself along the length. He goes only a few steps, until he is face to face with one Martin Blackwood, who is flushing darkly and holding up his wrist. "Your -"

"What?" Jon says at the same time, eloquently.

It seems an anti-climactic end to the whole thing. The spider's web around his wrist leads to Martin Blackwood, who seems wholly unremarkable, not to mention unqualified. It does not provide much of an explanation as to what, or why, but at least he knows where the string goes, now. 

"You're in the other end? Have you - Have you always been on the other end?"

"I haven't a clue what you mean," Jon immediately snaps, and actually runs to the copy room. They don't talk about it again. 

* * *

Even when Knowing fails him, the Web does not. He follows the string up to a place in the hallway, upstairs. It ends. He must be hidden, somewhere, or with Peter. But he's here, still. Sort of. Jon pulls on the string.

There is no tug, or disjointed thoughts about how lovely the world is to reassure him. There is just empty air where there should be Martin.

* * *

"I think I get it," Martin says, holding his hand. He is still quiet, but it is not Lonely-quiet, so Jon just hums and turns towards him, to better hear. 

Turning, he is met with the fact that he is very, very close. Good. He never wants to be out of arms reach again. "Get what?"

In response, Martin holds their joined hands up. In the darkness of the safehouse bedroom, the thing tying them together is impossible to see, but Jon understands. "It led you to me, in the Lonely, and even when you couldn't see it in the Coffin, I could still...feel you. I think you're my anchor, and I'm y - yours. And the Web wanted it to be that way, for some reason."

"Terribly reassuring," he nods. He is not sure he sounds as dry as he'd meant to about it. "You think it's that simple?"

"I don't know. I hope it is. Either way I - I'm glad that it's you. Whatever happens, at least I'll know where you are."

"Ah, well in that case it'll be useless, because I don't intend to let you out of my sight, personal Martin tracker or otherwise."

**Author's Note:**

> Of you'd like to see a specific paring and/or au, pop in with a message at goodmorningaperture.tumblr.com


End file.
